# unNamED ( tiLL NoW)

This summer when we caught the train back home, each one of us had a story or two to share with the others. The guys who had stamps on their passports had tales about how India lags behind the ‘better half’ of the world, and people like me for whom the passport proved handy while giving some identification proof had tales about how we got our poor posteriors churned all across the country. In a nutshell, everyone blamed someone or the other. For me, the summers were more than just internship. For me it was a vacation, the first real one. Till date, even the vacations proved something marked on the yearly planner as “a trip to uncle’s place” and then back to square one. I somehow suspected this summer might prove to be a page torn out from the “How to spend a magnificent summer!– a beginners guide”. Oh! how wrong I was!

If I was to present an account of what all happened with me, the stationary needed might be bit more and the final output might take the shape of a book, but all said and done I think its fair enough to tear apart few pages from the book and ‘force’ the readers (those who chose to read even after seeing my name with the article) live what I went through the summers that showed me all.

Aakhir jab okhli mein sir daal hi diya hai to moosal se kya darna!

So here I let the pages let loose,enjoi!

Story 1# Grab all opportunities that have freebies associated with them

New city, no one known to me and I arrive a day before I was supposed to report at the company, a Sunday. And the icing to the cake, I forgot the accommodation completely. Damn!

I get off the train at the station looking like a porter with all the luggage I had, find the way to the nearest PCO and start making calls. Five minutes later I am talking to the HR manager of the company I interned at. Throwing all the innocent and helpless chap stories bollywood movies taught me at the lady, I convince her about a situation where I am knee deep in shit (head downwards) and so next thing I know I am on a cab to the company. Obviously everything is closed over there, but nevertheless I get the luxury to use the STD phone (which was discontinued soon, but I was done by then), freshen up and take warm sips of coffee while the sweet lady kept herself busy finding me an accommodation and finally I spend the post-noon session at a luxury hotel (all expenses paid) and since it was all free for me who wont use the phone services and the delicious food, full course meals. [:D]

The next morning I walk out of the hotel signing off a bill for around 1700 bucks and you should have looked at my face to know how satisfied I was. [;)]

Story 2# IIT ka i-card ~ hutch ka doggie = naa ji naa!

The way out of most of the troubles around, open up your wallet, take out the laminated 4x3 I card you got from the institute, flash it to the trouble and voila, its gone!

This has always amazed me how something which was issued mainly to make yourself comfortable in the library has made my life comfortable at most of the unorthodox places.

Got caught driving without license.

“Kya karte ho?”

“Sir, Engg. student hain…”

“achhaa….kahan se kar rahe ho?”

and you think yessssss!!!!!.....out comes the card and off you go with less or many-a-times no fine at all.

Got caught in the sleeper coach in train with a general ticket.

“chalo nikalo fine…”

“sir, student hain sir…utne paise to hain nahi…jaldi mein reservation nahi mila sir…”

If the TTE buys your stories its okay, else you have no other option other than pulling out your I card to prove that you indeed are a student. You are free of all worries.

Probably the uses of your I card are more than you can even think of. Even I used to think so, before I tried to get a prepaid hutch connection this summers.

Like any other loyal guy from IIT, I gave the guy a Xeroxed copy of my I card as proof of my identity and despite all the protests the vendor had to offer me, I walked out, head raised high. And two days later my hutch connection went dead. Inquiry revealed it to be a case of ‘insufficient documents’ and after all my threats, displays of attitudes and even pleadings were turned down, I fished for my passport in the pile of garbage I had in my room and then got the connection reactivated after 2 days.

So much for the charisma of the I card,huh!

Story 3# Moral : In Mumbai local train, better be a call centre worker , not a guy from IIT.

Whoever said “Like repel and unlike attract each other” definitely deserves a nice spanking on his soft spot! Gaurav, a mechie from IITB was a guy I instantly made friends with. Movies, malls or be the general timepass sessions, we used to be together. And yeah, it will be highly rude and ungrateful of me not to mention the treats I used to get every once in a while when with him. The guy will always smile and I saw that smile vanish just once, on a local train journey. I don’t remember our destination but I remember the name of the ‘over friendly’ person who sat with us the entire journey, Ramesh Jogankar. The guy besides the age difference between us made our travel fun, laughed with us, cracked few jokes until he turned to Gaurav and asked a simple question,

“karte kya ho?”

“ji engg padh rahe hain…”

“achhaaa…kahan se?”

“ji IIT…powai…”

The guy makes a real disgusting face and I don’t remember the name of the institution he said, so lets call it X ( don’t blame me for the memory loss…I could barely survive the shock he gave me…)

“thodi si padhai kar li hoti to aaj X mein padh rahe hote…aise kisi bhi college mein padhne se kya faayeda…pata nahi naukri bhi lagegi ya nahi”

[:O]

Gaurav probably knew from before what a crime he had committed and so was seen lost in his cell while me all of a sudden developed a queer interest in the Rupa ads on the walls. Gaurav later told me that a majority of crowd u find in the locals don’t even know about the institute and consider some old local colleges far prestigious.

But even without this info I was ready for an answer in case the demon hit me, and just when I thought I was safe he asks me

“tum kya karte ho beta?”

“uncle…hutch gallery mein centre-incharge!”

“ohhh…naukri karte ho…badi achhi baat hai!”

I had never heard more swearings from a friend before that day!

Story 4# The Silver Screen gleamed.

[flashback]

My grandma used to tell me all sorts of stories of old times…good times, bad times…I listened to all of them with quite interest and sometimes wondered how would have it felt like when you could get a whole lot of oranges for one rupee and how would have it felt like when there were no televisions and all…(when I used to hear the tales, this computer wasn’t there, else I wouldn’t have given a shit to the television..)… but more than all these things, there was something that I always thought I was unfortunate enough to miss on….and missed with all my heart….she used to tell us how the national anthem was played after the movie was over in theatres…I so very much wanted to have that experience, even if for just one time…she also told us how this practice was discontinued for people wouldn’t wait for the national anthem to get over and would move out of the movie hall once the movie was over….damn!..in order to prevent the national anthem from being disgraced by a behaviour like this, this practice was discontinued…

[/flashback]

(don’t blame me for using formatting tags the way orkut does….I have been hooked onto the site long enough for it to run in my bloodstream now…did I tell you about the testimonial aphro wrote for me??...well, that’s a completely different story…may be some other time!...)

Now these summers I was in Mumbai all alone and all by myself…the big question was how to keep myself occupied during the weekends..??...the solution that finally occurred to me was watch a movie…tickets rate begin at freaking 110 bucks…so here I was sitting in the ADLABS cursing the authorities for making the tickets so costly, was remembering how tickets back here in RAVE start at just 50 bucks and was waiting for the shitty advertisements to get over with and the movie to start when the screen went all blank and a plain message flashed on the big screen…. “Please stand up for the National Anthem”…and my heart beamed up with joy as I found my floor beneath my feet to stand upon….

P.S. :I was told later by one of my friends that this is a practice followed in each and every movie-hall in mumbai….he didn’t know about the halls in other cities in maharashtra but atleast in Mumbai it was a trend everyone followed…just two words “Salaam Bombay!”

Story 5# Aamchi Mumbai…

More than two months spent in The Mumabi and there is just one thing that I got sure about…”I don’t wanna work in this city”…for this is the city where the distance between a pavement and the nearest hospital is a biker who is in a hurry to reach the next public urinal before anyone else gets there…for this is the city where three-fourth of the population uses one mode of transportation – train, and if you travel by one during the peak-hours, it will seem to you as if half of the commuters are sharing the same compartment with you…for this is the city where the person standing last in the queue is given no importance at all…even the buses, if you are last in the queue for boarding a bus, you will find the conductor giving the Go-Go-Go signal to the driver the moment the person in front of you hits the stairs…result – ‘you Jump!’…for this is the city with the motto – “slow, even if steady….must loose!!”…if you don’t have the balls to put up a fight against fellow commuters in the local train, prepare yourself to get down at the station next to your destination…happened with a fellow passenger once – he wanted to get down at vikhroli but couldn’t get himself out of the compartment in time…and please, that passenger wasn’t me!

This is the city that lives in perfect unity… “you paint the face of one of us black and we’ll make sure the whole city dons the same fashion” is the motto in their life…a statue desecrated and the next day the whole city is calculating the losses caused by the activists the day before…A leader dies of his illness but that is something that doesn’t concern the angry n hurt socialworkers…the doctor must be killed, the hospital brought to level-zero and the life to a standstill….you get to hear the most entertaining stories about the life in mumbai…how the guy who bought a cellphone for five grands from the grey market opens up the pack back at his home to find a soap-cake nicely packed inside…still, he doesn’t do a thing and forgets the loss of the five grands he just suffered ‘coz he knows it is a better choice to opt for than going to complain about the fraud and then getting thrashed at the hands of the organized grey-market vendor crime….So much in the name of aamchi Mumbai!!!

Story 6# They walked again

I still owe my being away from the Mumbai Blasts to Rishi Shrivastava, a senior with whom I was scheduled to meet that evening….had I not been meeting up with him, I also would have been on one of the trains to Santa Cruz…but I got Rishi’s call in between making me postpone my Santa Cruz plans and they remained suspended…still suspended…I could never find the tiem to go over there…so here I was sitting in the office killing some of my own sweet time when one of my colleagues announces – “Khar station pe bomb phata hai…”…and within a minute the number of blasts in our knowledge increased to three and to five within the next ninety seconds….cell phone lines got crammed, buses got packed, there were traffic jams everywhere, and within an hour the scene clearly told what would it be like if trains are out for a week or so….the city will crumble down to pieces….the terror had struck the very backbone of Mumbai, the transport everyone adopts – the rich and the poor…the blasts had shaken the city that is always on the go…the city was shaken but the natives didn’t break down….right after the blasts, the look that was on their faces, even around the affected regions, was not of terror or fear….it was of the sense of responsibility to help that was needed to be extended to those who needed them….people from the compartment next to the blown off carriage could be seen lending a helping hand instead of fleeing away to safety…had it not been the heavily increased traffic, you would never have realized the occurrence of anything unusual in the city where androids run in flesh and blood…and the scene the next day???

The city dwellers are back behind their workstations in their office cubicles…I don’t know whether this was right or wrong but if the culprits behind the blasts wanted to drive the mumbaiyas into tiny mouseholes flooded with their fear, they failed…they failed miserably…a salute to the spirit of the people that never went down!

P.S. : In the locals, you can find a first class and a second class divisions in the same carriage separated by a partition…and one of the people I know was in the second class side when the blast ripped apart the first class compartment adjacent to him…he was thrown on the floor and was bit hurt too…and next day I received a call from him…he was calling from his office desk!

Story 7# gokarting...action replay mode...

knee cap on your elbow, brakes on the right...i still wonder why everything was just opposite to the normal parameters in the gokarting arena....well the fun part was that i had sneaked away from my office in the name of a much needed lunch [;)] for trying hands at the wheels in those miniatures that went round and round in the tracks right infront of my eyes.....and yessshhhhhh...i dint take a single call from the office all this while...[:D]....and returned back to my desk two hours later....[:p]

reached the tracks sweating by the long walk all the way up there....went back to get the ticket from the booth...got tickets done for four laps...and whooo hoooo!!!....I was ready for some action....the attendant forced my hand in the knee cap just similar to the one i had on my left knee, warned me of the hot engine ( the engine looked really hot n mean ), and gave me a pat on the fibre eggy head .....zooooooommmmmmmmm and thudd!!!...there i was with my chunk of metal against the dunlop fences....with the help of another attendant, I took a turn, and now in order to be careful and not smash the car again I drove carefully and safely [:p]...(lets not get into what the speedometer had to say)...but somehow I always lagged behind by one lap from the cold blooded murderer who thrice tried to hit my car down the tracks.....and just when I had started feeling safe and had started gaining speed, I saw a sign flashing "Last Lap".....damn!!!!.....better luck next time!!!...[:(]

Story 8# Back to square one!

This was some part which I guess was common to us all, with a change in the scene here and there. After the interns, back to the comforts of home for a few days before getting back to the campus to get our asses shredded!

And this is how the scene went by :

Time : Mid-June,2006.

Scene - Living room of a middle-class home. Few furniture, light coming from the open balcony door, soft music in the background.

Father can be seen sitting on the couch busy going through the newspaper. Son enters from the left hand corner of the room holding a cup of tea.

“Papa, Chai!”

“hmmm…rakh do”

(son places the tea on the table and turns to disappear from the scene again, and then it happens…)

“How was the training son? How did it go?”

“mmmm…okay only…”

“kuchh seekhne ko mila?”

“haan…a lot!”

(don’t you guys agree…it was a lot,indeed!)

“aur…weekend pe kya karte the??..”
“weekend?...kuchh khaas nahi…just general stuff…”

(and he makes a quick exit making some excuse)

Now back to my room thinking of all that I went through, the stories you know and a lot left untold, the city indeed gave me a lot to remember these summers….Not to mention the hard afterwork by some of my friends who chewed upon my ass to get it all out of me and no matter what bhatt has to say about the sexual orientation of mechies, I have known few untold summer tales of some mechies, home and abroad, which will beg to differ…but in the interest of my well being, not to mention the image I have around, it will be better not to reveal anything remotely associated with any member of the better half of world’s population.

P.S. : When I say world population, I seriously mean world population…some places and institutes can be counted out of it but..[:P]...if u know what I mean...[;)]

---